Grace - fresh vital worship since 1993

August 2001: Greenbelt - Breaking the ice

this was based on the march 01 service 'desert'.

1. vox pops [grace pops] around GB site during day [possibly ice pops given to interviewees as reward and advertisement for service?]

2. give out 'what does being in a desert feel like?' postcards to the queue for service [collect inside]

3. hexstatic 'deadly media' video intro

4. play back vox pops

5. positive and negative deserts - mccarthy/keenan reading

6. group discussion

7. darkness, responses on the feelings cards read out as a meditation [luminous stars ceiling]

8. stations time:

a] central station - sand on tarpaulin, ice block suspended above - write prayers in sand [incl. justin's explanatory postcards]. the melting block of ice was originally part of a ritual for a combined jubilee 2000 service at vaux. we had no photos of it, so looked for an excuse to do it again!

b] solitude - people listen on headphones to cd players [a disc labelled 'traffic island discs' cf radio programme 'desert island discs'] in front of a big screen with back projection of driving a car - in a traffic jam on the north circular in london on the way to ikea!

c] write your own psalm

d] addictions, as revealed by experience of withdrawal - mike's text, steve's luxuries/necessities cards

9. final ritual - take sand for your pocket [from the central station]/take an ice cube

Photos

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The desert experience, both positive and negative, hot and cold. This was based on the 'Desert' service.

People write prayers in the sand. The block of ice melts slowly. We first did the block of ice as a station at the Jubilee 2000 service in 1999. It looked stunning but we forgot to photograph it. So we did it again at Greenbelt just to get photos, but people read all sorts of profound meanings into it!

The idea of the ice block was copied by many others.

Write your own psalm of exile, based around Psalm 137.

'Solitude'. The modern urban desert experience, listening to the car stereo while stuck in traffic, here reproduced with CD Walkmans and video footage. The footage is a trip to Ikea at Wembley along the North Circular.

The music was a compilation by Grace called 'Traffic Island Discs' (a play on long-running British radio show 'Desert Island Discs').

 

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